By his mastery of the spoken word, Fidel Castro reveals the unfolding process of the Cuban revolution, its extraordinary challenges, crises, chaos and achievements. Part of a two-volume anthology, this first volume is based on Castro's speeches.

Part of a series of books to be published to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the Cuban revolution, this anthology is based upon primary source material and documents the key moments of the revolution and its impact outwith Cuba.

A revelatory memoir of the 17 years Juan Sanchez spent as one of Fidel Castro's personal soldiers, in his innermost circle

An exclusive collection of Fidel Castro's remarkably frank writings about his formative years. Features an introduction by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and includes previously unpublished personal reflections by the Cuban President.

Sweig shatters the mythology surrounding the Cuban Revolution in a compelling revisionist history that reconsiders the revolutionary roles of Castro and Guevara and restores to a central position the leadership of the Llano. Granted unprecedented access to the classified records of Castro's 26th of July Movement's underground operatives--the only scholar inside or outside of Cuba allowed access to the complete collection in the Cuban Council of State's Office of Historic Affairs--she details the debates between Castro's mountain-based guerrilla movement and the urban revolutionaries in Havana, Santiago, and other cities.

Tracking Cuban history from 1492 to the present, The Cuba Reader includes more than one hundred selections that present myriad perspectives on Cuba's history, culture, and politics. The volume foregrounds the experience of Cubans from all walks of life, including slaves, prostitutes, doctors, activists, and historians. Combining songs, poetry, fiction, journalism, political speeches, and many other types of documents, this revised and updated second edition of The Cuba Reader contains over twenty new selections that explore the changes and continuities in Cuba since Fidel Castro stepped down from power in 2006. For students, travelers, and all those who want to know more about the island nation just ninety miles south of Florida, The Cuba Reader is an invaluable introduction.

This is the first autobiographical selection to be published in English that gives a glimpse of Fidel - the boy and the young man - who was to become one of the outstanding, if controversial, political leaders of the century. The book brings together a range of interviews and talks in which Fidel Castro speaks candidly about his family background, his religious education and political influences.

The product of an intimate 23 hour dialogue between Fidel Castro and Brazilian liberation theologist Frei Betto. Castro speaks candidly about his views on religion and his education in elite Catholic colleges, offering a unique insight into the man behind the beard.

This intimate, revisionist portrait of Fidel Castro, showing how an unlikely young Cuban led his country in revolution and transfixed the world, is “sure to become the standard on Castro’s early life” (Publishers Weekly). Until now, biographers have treated Castro’s life like prosecutors, scouring his past for evidence to convict a person they don’t like or don’t understand. Young Castro challenges us to put aside the caricature of a bearded, cigar-munching, anti-American hothead to discover how Castro became the dictator who acted as a thorn in the side of US presidents for nearly half a century. In this “gripping and edifying narrative…Hansen brings imposing research and notable erudition” (Booklist) to Castro’s early life, showing Castro getting his toughness from a father who survived Spain’s class system and colonial wars to become one of the most successful independent plantation owners in Cuba. We see a boy running around that plantation more comfortable playing with the children of his father’s laborers than his own classmates at elite boarding schools in Santiago de Cuba and Havana. We discover a young man who writes flowery love letters from prison and contemplates the meaning of life, a gregarious soul attentive to the needs of strangers but often indifferent to the needs of his own family. These pages show a liberal democrat who admires FDR’s New Deal policies and is skeptical of communism, but is also hostile to American imperialism. They show an audacious militant who stages a reckless attack on a military barracks but is canny about building an army of resisters. In short, Young Castro reveals a complex man. The first American historian in a generation to gain access to the Castro archives in Havana, Jonathan Hansen was able to secure cooperation from Castro’s family and closest confidants. He gained access to hundreds of never-before-seen letters and interviewed people he was the first to ask for their impressions of the man. The result is a nuanced and penetrating portrait of a man at once brilliant, arrogant, bold, vulnerable, and all too human: a man who, having grown up on an island that felt like a colonial cage, was compelled to lead his country to independence.

The issues confronting a changing world are frankly discussed in this lively dialogue between two of Latin America's most controversial political figures. In this wide-ranging conversation, Fidel Castro discusses the collapse of the Soviet Union, an historical evaluation of Stalin, the future of socialism, the role of ideas in today's world, Cuba's relations with the United States from Kennedy to Bush, human rights in the Third World, homosexuality, literature and music. Face to face with Fidel Castro is one of the most important political books to emerge from Latin America in the 1990s.